Phil 247 Philosophy of Biology Fall 2007, Wednesday, 5:00-7:50

1. Course Description

Since the 1970s philosophical interest in the biological sciences has exploded. This course will provide an introduction to the major issues in biology addressed by philosophers (and by biologists interested in the conceptual and foundational issues concerning their field).

The focus is necessarily selective. For example, this course will not historical development of biology prior to the mid-20th century. There will be more coverage of that material in Phil 147, the undergraduate philosophy of biology, and you are welcome to sample the readings on the webpage for that course or to attend lectures for that course when they are of interest.

2. Course Requirements

Students are expected to do the assigned reading and to attend all the class sessions. By 11 am prior to each class session each student should submit a one-paragraph comment or question to the course email list. These may either seek clarification about or raise objections to major points in the reading. The contributions should reflect an effort to understand the assigned material and should provide the context for the issue raised. There are also be three papers assigned during the quarter (due dates are October 20, November 10 (delayed unitl November 17) , and December 10--these dates do not correspond to class days). These papers should be in the range of 1,200 to 1,800 words and will be based largely on the material we are covering in class (i.e., they are not research papers). They should be submitted electronically in Word to papers@mechanism.ucsd.edu

3. Texts

All of the reading assignments can be found on the web. Readings which are copy-projected are only available on a password controlled portion of the course website. The userid and password for this portion of the website are both biology. See the schedule of classes and readings below.

The literature in philosophy of biology is massive. Even the range of central, important papers exceeds what we can cover in this course. The list below includes many readings (marked with an asterisk) that we will not cover in class but which you may find useful, especially if you choose paper topics to which they are relevant.

4. Email List

There is an email list for this seminar: gradpbio@mechanism.ucsd.edu. It is required that you subscribe to this list. Do it IMMEDIATELY. You can always unsubscribe later if you drop the course. The purpose of the list is twofold--to enable me to communicate information about upcoming seminar sessions and to allow members of the seminar to raise questions or engage in discussion outside of the seminar. Initially the list will be unmoderated, which will enable all (but only) subscribers to send email to the list. (You will need to send email from the address you use to register for the list.) If this is abused, we will need to move to a moderated list.